Counting Cards
by Wynter Sora
Summary: "You know, dog boy, that's pretty much the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me." She's a clone, but she's not Max.  She's faster, stronger, smarter- and a better friend. .:Maya/Ari, set during SOF.


**A/N: It's wrong to love a fictional pairing as much as I love Maya/Ari.**

**Since neither of their personalities are explained much in the books, I took a few not-so-creative liberties with their characters is this. Ah, well. That's the beauty of fanfiction. And after re-reading _Angel_, I was in the mood to flame Max a bit.  
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**Anyways, don't forget to review. Seriously, I love reviews more than chocolate.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride or any of the characters.**

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><p>Sitting in the back of the van one Monday afternoon, in the process of stacking her hundredth house of cards, Max II announces, "I hate Jeb."<p>

Being his son and all, you'd think that Ari would be at least a _little _pissed at that. But, hell, he hates the guy too. Maybe even more than she does, if that's possible.

"What'd he do this time?" he asks, bored. It's chokingly hot in here because Jace and Subject Eighteen (Ari doesn't know his name and honestly doesn't really care) are paranoid that their little clone birdie will fly away if they crack a window or door. Even though she wants to take down Max just as much as the rest of them.

"The way he _looks _at me," she complains, flicking the ace of spades out of the flimsy structure, sending the whole thing crashing down. Well, not crashing. More like fluttering. "Half the time he's complaining that I'm not as good as Max and the other half he's bitching about the fact that they _dared _clone his little world-saving prodigy." Shrugging, she gathers the cards her hand and taps them against the floor to even out the edges. "I don't know how you deal with him."

Simple; he doesn't.

"Besides," Max II adds, "it's not like Max is all that great to begin with. Is that coffee?"

"Yeah," he says. "And it's mine."

"This whole thing blows," she observes. "Why is that little bitch going to _school_, anyways? Like she's some normal kid instead of a freak."

_Bitch _is probably Max II's favorite word. And she's basically calling _herself _a freak, considering she's Max's clone. But in the eyes of the general public, they'd all be freaks.

"And now we have to sit here and wait for her to come outside so that we can drive to her house and sit and wait for her there," Max II grumbles, concluding her rant with an irritated "We never actually _do _anything" before flinging the cards at the opposite wall.

Ari hates Max. He's hated Max for as long as he can remember, even as a little kid who followed her around the lab. Not because she's oh-so-special and wonderful like she might believe, but because all he wanted was for Jeb to see that maybe Ari was oh-so-special and wonderful, too. And she would give him That Look, the one that just about broke his little-kid heart.

Pathetic. That's what he was. Just… pathetic.

The new Max taps her fingers against the floor, staring off at the wall above Ari's head. "Her whole damn flock is screwed, you know? That Angel kid's pretty smart and all, but she's the newest model. The most improved." Shrugging, she adds, "The whitecoats want her alive. They don't care about the rest of them, but they want Angel. Pity. What's his name, Tooth or something-"

"Fang."

"Yeah, him. He's hot. But he's useless, he really is. I mean, what does he _do_? Sit there and look emo?"

Ari's acute sense of hearing manages to pick up the sound of the last bell ringing inside the school. In about thirty seconds, Max and her followers- excuse him, her _flock_- will be walking down the street, talking, laughing, and for all their so-called survival skills, oblivious to the bulky black van following behind them.

"They're all useless," Ari growls.

Max II nods approvingly. "And that's why they're slated for extermination, you know?" Her voice wavers the tiniest bit on the word _extermination_. Once she's outlived her usefulness, the whitecoats will kill her, too. The only thing Ari has going for him is the fact that he's Jeb's son, though that doesn't really amount to much anyways. It's not like he could cash in a few favors and save her, too, because she's pretty much the closest thing he's ever had to a friend.

The van begins to move forward, and the new Max- he's beginning to think of her as _his _Max- asks again, "Is that coffee?"

"It's _mine_."

He hates the flock. All of them, even Angel, the little six-year-old mind controlling mutant. The little kid. But most of all, he hates Max, Max, Max, because Max is the perfect girl, the prodigal daughter, the savior of the world, and Ari is simply the kid Jeb left behind. But the girl sitting across from him is just Max's clone, Max's replacement, but the whitecoats screwed up with that, too. Because Max II isn't anything like the original Max. She's… different. Her own person. A rebellion within herself.

Rebelling against the whitecoats is so much more than stupid. They have _expiration dates_, which is a fancy way of saying the scientists will always have the last laugh.

"Tell you what, Maxie," he says. Spontaneously, almost. "I know some people. Whitecoats. After they finish experimenting on Max, they're gonna retire her. Bet you'd like to be there."

Max II's face seems to light up, the way a kid's does at Christmas. Not that Ari would know, because Jeb was too bust for Christmas and then he was gone, taking care of Max in Colorado because She Is Important and Ari is supposed to understand.

"You know, dog boy," Max II says thoughtfully, "that's pretty much the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."

"…that's kind of sad."

"Oh, shut up."


End file.
